baseball scandals

it's not really a 'scandal', but the hostage-taking attitude of baseball and the dumbass response of local cities re: new stadiums pisses me off more than any of these. the economic benefits of public financing almost never materialize for anyone besides the owners. fucking build a new stadium yourself if you 'need' it to be profitable.

Mookie OTM.

What about the Pirates making tens on millions of dollars a year profit without ever trying to create a winning team?

The Black Sox scandal is objectively the worst scandal, I guess, but it's hard to get too worked up about it because it happened forever ago and the real villains in the piece (the gangsters who fixed the thing in the first place) basically got away scot free.

Baseball Scandals:

Baseball (inclusive) 1850-2010

also would argue that the Black Sox had the most good to come out of it, one way or another? Or the perceived emergence of legitimacy of professional sport?

xxxp Still think the Marlins are worse than the Pirates even if they do occasionally try to put together winning teams. The schtick the Marlins have pulled with Miami-Dade county to get the much needed publicly funded stadium all the while pulling in many millions in profit is gross.

I'm fine w/ Rose being considered small beer as long as he never ever gets in the HOF

(but I will probably stop caring once Steinbush gets in)

Sex scandals--how could we forget sex scandals! Kekich/Peterson wife-swap, Boggs/Margo, Garvey and his paternity suits, Dave Stewart and Lucille (can't believe I remembered the name without looking it up...), etc.

You have strong feelings about these?

Kekich/Peterson is a pretty amazing story

Mostly amazing cuz Fritz Peterson and Suzanne Kekich are still married!

You have strong feelings about these?

In terms of this poll, "strong feelings" are indeed part of the question, but in general, I don't see strong feelings as being a precondition of a good scandal. Scandals are often just eye-candy: fascinating to follow, with or without strong feelings. As PTT says, Kekich/Peterson is an amazing story (ditto the others I mentioned). I mean, who would have ever guessed that the Dodgers' Andy Hardy first baseman was secretly John Holmes?

"I mean, who would have ever guessed that the Dodgers' Andy Hardy first baseman was secretly John Holmes?"

Most people who watched Cheers?

"I mean, who would have ever guessed that the Dodgers' Andy Hardy first baseman was secretly John Holmes?"

I don't even know what this sentence means!

You're saying Sam = Steve Garvey? C'mon--Sam Malone was pretty blatant about his womanizing. Garvey was God and country and Dodger Blue. Don't see a parallel there, unless your point is that one should assume any professional baseball player is a womanizer. Which seems a little drastic.

Stewart Lucille "scandal" was more amusing than really scandalous. He wasn't a big enough deal at the time to garner much attention.

I assume that all male professional athletes are womanizers.

Except for the gay ones that is.

god i wish i had remembered to include matt cain pounding a special needs kid

cleon jones getting shit and eventually released by the mets because he was caught sleeping in a van with a white woman(!) who was not his wife was the defining scandal of my youth and a fucking disgrace

U.S. Investors Seek High Returns in Bets on Dominican Baseball Prospects

I don't think you communists understand that ppl who run a private enterprise can do whatever they like

― kind of shrill and very self-righteous (Dr Morbius)

The 81 and 94 strikes totally angered me and screwed over Reds fans twice. The Reds had the best record in baseball in 81 and didn't make the playoffs because of the screwy 1st half, 2nd half scheme they had in place for playoff positioning. It was made worse that the scummy Dodgers won it all.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

i'd like to hear from the strike voters

i voted white sox... poor john cusack...

I'm most surprised by Rose at #1. As I wrote above, I don't think a good scandal has to involve strong feelings, and Rose was (and is) definitely a good scandal. But I wonder if the five people who voted for it actually answered the question literally, i.e. it elicits strong feelings in them? Rose hardly even registered with me in that department. Or is it just that Rose himself elicits strong feelings? That would make more sense to me.

owners' collusion during the free-agent era is a contender

also the major leagues before 1947

both of these urinate on the other options from a great height

jajajaja

i voted rose, and i voted literally, i.e. that his scandal evokes emotion for me. a lot of this comes from the fact that he is the first baseball player i ever knew about, and the first that i really liked. i can still remember watching a film strip in elementary school (that for some reason showed a picture of him) and saying "that's pete rose!"

sorry for the cliche, but not really: he just always seemed to put his heart into the game. always ran the bases as if his life depended on the speed, etc. i can not believe that he bet against the reds, but i do believe he bet ON them, which is questionable but imo not something to be forever shamed and punished for, and that is why i feel strongly about it. being banned from baseball, yes, but let him in the hall.

i mean, let me be clear: it is more than questionable. it is clearly wrong to bet on a game you are involved in in any way, it can affect your actions w/r/t that game. but compared to betting against your own team, it's just such a whole other level.

i voted for "this time it counts", what a load of sheiBe.

B = capital Beta fwiw

i don't know if this is a controversial or hated opinion on ILB, i'm new here. xpost

"this time it counts" isnt really a scandal though, is it?

Interesting about Rose. I guess he's fallen so far, it's easy to forget that at one time he was viewed by many to embody everything good about the game...unless you were Ray Fosse or Bud Harrelson...but I can definitely see where he'd be a kid favourite. I felt that way about Bench.

yeah. he's truly one of my favorites.

Can someone recommend a good article that covers the collusion scandal in depth?

I thought maybe James took the issue up, but now I realize it was the Rose scandal; he wrote this really long, meticulous defense of Rose (whom James otherwise didn't have much use for) in whichever annual it was in '90 or '91. I think he may have changed his position since he wrote it.

i find Rose's last season as manager/1B sticking himself into late inning games to goose his hit total more offensive then betting on his guys.

why!

Baseball doesn't think much of dirty Italians anyway and neither do the fans.

riiiight

Haven't read this yet:

http://mlb.si.com/2013/07/24/an-oral-history-of-the-pine-tar-game/?sct=uk_t11_a4

I'm almost positive I was watching that game on TV, yet 7/24/83 was a Sunday, and it was an afternoon start--where would I have gotten a Yankees/Royals game on a Sunday afternoon? I'm not even sure if there were Sunday night broadcasts then. Baffling.

You've gotta watch that clip--don't know that I've ever seen an athlete more apoplectic than Brett. Priceless: it's Gaylord Perry who sneaks the bat off the field! (Finishing his career with the Royals in '83...)

SABR marks the centennial with some myth-busting

https://sabr.org/eight-myths-out

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/effectively-wild-episode-1353-the-show-goes-on/